For Caitlin
by faceted-mind
Summary: This is the only thing that makes sense. Spoilers for ALL of season 2


Fic: For Caitlin  
Rating: PG+ (not quite PG-13)  
Characters/Pairing: Peter centric (Peter/Caitlin)  
WARNING SPOILERS FOR VOLUME 2 up to Powerless.

Author's Note: This is the only thing that makes sense...

He is being taken over by them, piece by piece. They hold him in such a grip it sometimes feels like they are living through him. But that's just not right. They're still alive, still living in their own right. It's just their emotions, and people were more than just their emotions. They were more… they were… right?

_Sylar's powers are reached through jealousy, sometimes rage. He mentions that killing the originals he's copying from would make him a better hero - after all, no use being a one-of-a-kind copy of everyone else. Peter can ignore him most of the time, except when he's holding people by the throat up against the wall, and the rage he uses to pull that power out is dying to kill. Desperate._

It had become clear to him what had to be done much sooner than he'd expected, almost as soon as he'd returned to the present, with a picture of Nathan in his hand and memories flooding back. And surprisingly the decision to go ahead with the plan was nowhere near as difficult as he had imagined, because through all those memories, she was still the strongest, still the closest to him. It all made so much sense in his mind, there was an order to it, and it only briefly worried at his conscience before he put it behind him. There were so many dark voices in his head these days, it was becoming hard to worry about morally grey.

_Hiro's power, the Hiro of the future, was fuelled by desperation, and the depths of despair. That Hiro knew what it was to love and have lost, and had lost more times that he could count. Maybe there was hope there somewhere, but the desperation won out most of the time.  
It was desperation that had brought Hiro to the past, and it was the same that took him into the future with Caitlin in his arms. Desperation, not hope for an answer to his question. (Please tell me who I am, what the future holds…)_

He won't fix this thing that he's seen, of course, won't save the world. Not this time. And not because he can't, listening to Nathan (he wonder if the man knew he was represented by greed these days. He never had managed to fly on love alone) say the words that used to come out of his own soul (I believe in you. You're my brother Pete, I love you), but because to save the world now would be to destroy the timeline that now held the woman he loved. To save the world, he would have to kill her. Murder her with his own hands.

_Elle smirks into his mind, her power represented by loneliness - so easy to access alone in Ireland with no one but himself, no memories of anyone but his aggressors. She reminds him how nice it is to squeeze someone's throat with telekinesis until they make tiny frightened noises… He can't even keep them separate from each other in his mind any more. Maybe he's breaking down…_

No. The Shanti virus would happen. There was no other way. Only then would he see her again. Only then.

_Ted has always stood for guilt, a deep, soul-eating guilt. That one was more than easy to pick up as he sees himself tear down New York, again and again in his dreams. So many dead…_

When he has the vial in his hands (He can't let them suspect. And after all, this is what Nathan needed to see) he pops the lid slightly and watches as the heat from his hands vaporises the contents before he turns the vial to dust and lets it slip through his fingers. In the air, the virus runs rife, they're all infected in seconds. In the future, one year from now, ninety three percent of the world's population will be dead. But Caitlin… Caitlin will be alive, looking for him as he disappears back into the past. And he'll be there, in Ireland waiting for her. His year will be seconds in her eyes. He can wait. For her, he can wait.

He travels through time the natural way, one day at a time. Reaches Ireland just in time before the borders close. Buys a house and washes the virus out of his body daily with combined sadness and anger - the way Claire always feels in his mind. He feels washed clean every time.

_It used to be that Claire's powers came from the sadness of leaving people behind. That look in her eyes, that was fear of abandonment and it was deep seated, and it dragged at the bottom of his soul when he pulled that healing power out. Now her powers are angry, roiling in turmoil. He doesn't like to think of her suffering, but it suits him better, he thinks, being able to pull out this power in this way after everything._

People start dying and he knows he's the one to spread it into Europe so quickly. The pub is shut without Caitlin to run it, and he buys it and reopens it, even though people don't gather in public places anymore. The infection rate skyrockets in the first three months. Figures are published and he's the only one who knows that they're predicting far too low. But then no one would predict the numbers he's heard. No one wants to predict Armageddon.

Nathan is dead, Matt and Hiro and Nicky fall to the virus. Adam hasn't shown his face, and Claire cries every time she contacts him. She doesn't want to be left alone. He promises to visit her when there are too few people in the world to worry about borders or quarantine any more. Barely two hundred thousand left in Eire, just over twenty million left in the whole of the United States. It wouldn't be long, and borders would become irrelevant.

He doesn't remember to check the date, but he sees her at the door off the pub, looking lost, broken. He should have checked the date, should have been there to meet her, to reassure her. Instead there's a moment where she doesn't recognise him, and he has a chance to take her all in. He'd almost forgotten how beautiful she was. His hair had grown long again, and he pushed it back off his face and grinned at her. Her shock as she recognises him is worth the wait.  
"Peter?"  
"I've been waiting for you."


End file.
